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Traditional marketing doesn't work anymore. Buying expensive print ads. Renting space on billboards. These are all relics of the past. Today's smartest companies have turned to growth hacking. Ryan Holiday, author of Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising, is on the forefront of this new mindset, which could revolutionize marketing. "[A] lean, flexible approach is more conducive to success," says Holiday, who is American Apparel's Director of Marketing and a highly sought-after marketing speaker. In a new Fast Company article, Holiday describes why growth hacking has been responsible for the remarkable growth of brands like Facebook, StumbleUpon, DropBox, AirBnB, and Spotify.

"Growth hackers, deprived of traditional marketing resources, must be creative," says Holiday. In the article, he describes his strategy when growth hacking in an industry that has a tight hold on its old-school approach to marketing and publicity: book publishing. His innovative approach to Timothy Ferriss' The 4-Hour Chef ensured the book debuted on the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists, selling more than 60,000 physical copies in its first week. Here are his four steps to success:

Step 1: Product Market Fit

Create a product that is deliberately crafted for your prospective market. Holiday and Ferriss conducted research among friends and colleagues to determine which parts of the book were successful, and which didn't appeal.

Step 2: Growth and Attention

"Instead of pushing for TV and radio coverage, we decided to focus on bloggers—because blogs are trackable and work fast," says Holiday. This resulted in a big online push on the day of the book's release.

Step 3: Virality

Holiday and Ferriss released a free excerpt of the book online, which was downloaded two million times and was instrumental in selling thousands of copies of the book.

Step 4: Optimization and Retention

"We looked at which blog posts worked and which didn’t, which drove traffic and which didn’t, what drove spikes in Amazon rank and which didn’t," says Holiday. This information was crucial for analyzing success and will give Holiday the ammunition he needs to run similarly successful campaigns.

In his talks, Holiday shows how the marketing game has changed forever. He explains the growth hacker mindset and provides a new set of rules—critical information whether you’re an aspiring marketer, an entrepreneur, or a Fortune 500 executive. To book Ryan Holiday as a speaker, contact The Lavin Agency.